The Last Resort

The other day, as I was browsing through the graphic novels in the Teen Fiction section of my local library, I stumbled across The Last Resort.

This seemed a bit odd to me, as it isn't a graphic novel - it's a picture book - and the last time I stumbled across this book it was in the Junior Fiction section. Mind you, that was very possibly a different library.

I can see why people would have difficulty classifying this book - it's an odd bingdingle of a thing. It is a picture book, but it's on the deep side. The book is very literary, and the more classic texts and old movies you've encountered the more you are likely to appreciate it. I would have loved it when I was ten, because I was the kind of freak who wanted to read unabridged classics as a child.

This is a picture book for people who love picture books, and a picture book for people who love literature. It's a book for people like me - which is probably why I've come back to it a few times.

I've borrowed it a couple of times - and will probably buy it if I stumble across it in a store - and I usually read it several times over when I have it in my possession. And yet I don't know if I like it - or, if I do, why. It's strangely compelling, for a book I can't completely engage with.

The Last Resort is clearly Roberto Innocenti's baby. It's the only work I've seen by this illustrator, and I love it. I am completely captivated by every image in the book. I find myself sinking into the pictures and feeling stirred by the hints of story woven into them. The resort he has illustrated is so well realised that I want to jump into his pictures like the chalk drawings in Mary Poppins.

Every now and then I see a picture I wish I'd seen as a child, because I would have loved to let my imagination roam through the image the way I used to when I was a kid. I haven't lost the ability completely, but I know I'm not as good at it as I used to be. The Last Resort is full of images that I want to bubble through my dreams.

But then... But then the story itself is oddly distancing. I don't know what it is, but I just can't sink into the story (as written) the same way I sink into the story as illuminated in the pictures. It's as if the text is moving at a different rhythm to the illustrations.

I've noticed this a few times, when I've found a book that was clearly driven by the illustrator, but not written by him. It's almost as if the writer cannot catch the illustrator's fire the same way the illustrator can catch the writer's. While the story is obviously Innocenti's story, the text is by J. Patrick Lewis. I don't know if it consists of Lewis' original words, or if he translated much for Innocenti, but it seems oddly hollow - as if it is skimming across the surface of the story without diving in.

There's something odd about the way the story is told. It's as though the book is trying to be poetic and prosaic at the same time - inspiring a sense of wonder and mystery, but revealing the answers almost as soon as it poses the questions. There are points where you feel like saying: "No, wait, let me play with this a bit more", but then the story has moved on to something else...

Some of that will be Innocenti's story, and some of it will be Lewis' words - it just always feels as if there's something missing. Some lost opportunity. There are riddles posed at the end of the book that should have been posed at the beginning. There are clues that seem to be delivered almost out of order. In the end, you can't quite work out if it was magical and wondrous, or just a strange little story.

Speaking of the story - it is a little bit magical and wondrous. An artist (Innocenti) has lost his imagination and decides to go on a trip to find it. On a whim, he pulls off the main road onto a dirt track and drives to the end of it - where he finds The Last Resort.

This is a magical beach-side resort (it seems to have the ability to grow rooms at whim and - TARDIS-like - is bigger on the inside) with an odd assortment of guests - all of which have lost something. They seem to have found their way to the resort, and now they are waiting for whatever they've lost to come and find them there. Once they've found it (or it has found them), they have to leave to make room for new guests.

If these characters seem a little familiar, that's probably because you may have read about them before. They are characters from books, writers, historical figures, actors - and there's even one archetype.

The mystery of the book is in working out who these guests are... or is it? The artist doesn't seem to take long puzzling over it. And while some characters are quite obvious, some are never clear.

The mystery of the book is working out how these characters are connected to each other... or is it? There are a few moments, but nothing that actually feels like a story, as such. You find out that one character was looking for another character barely a moment before he finds her.

The mystery of the book is in working out what each character needs to find... but then, you don't learn the other half of each matching set until the very end.

Ah, but what's not to love about a magical sea-side resort run by a parrot in which guests can come from every corner of fiction or history to search for something they've lost?

It's uneven, yet marvellous. I'm not sure I enjoyed reading it the last time, and yet I want to read it again. It will push you and pull you and take you to a place that is so very much worth visiting, yet leave you with a sense of unfinished business.

An odd bingdingle of a book, indeed.